Hans Bethe: The Nuclear Many Body Problem

We discuss the work of Hans Bethe and others in formulating a theoretical foundation for the nuclear shell model. Written for a general audience, this article describes the evolution from Brueckner's reaction matrix theory to the Moszkowski-Scott separation method and ultimately to the Reference Spectrum method of Bethe, Brandow, and Petschek. We also discuss connections with the recently developed low momentum nucleon-nucleon interactions.